There are many lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. But one is already clear: governments on a global scale have messed up. We are in the current situation because not only did China handle the outbreak with dishonesty and incompetence, but the US government followed suit and proceeded to learn nothing from China’s mistakes, making the same ones instead. Were the governments of the world more adaptable, this outbreak could have been caught early with far less harm both inside and outside of the US.

China’s response to the virus SARS-CoV-2, a coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19, according to USAToday, was to clamp down on reports of it and silence the doctor who first reported the disease to fellow physicians. In other words, they hid the truth of the pandemic from the rest of the world, lulling everyone else into a false sense of security and wasting time that could have been used to bolster responses to the virus and save lives.

This would seem like the right time to blame China for censoring both concerned government officials and citizens on social media and to condemn them for the pandemic rapidly spreading through the US. China didn’t show good global citizenship—it’s all their fault.

However, experts at Business Insider found that President Donald Trump of the U.S. made the same mistakes. Even when the news that the coronavirus was spreading across countries came to light, he ignored myriad warnings of the incoming catastrophe and instead downplayed the threat and reassured American citizens that everything was under control when in reality, it wasn’t.

This wasted valuable time that could have been used stockpiling masks, ventilators, and working on a vaccine. The human body, in response to the virus, produces antibodies that are made to fight it, and a vaccine works by inserting a deactivated version of the virus into the bloodstream so that the body can create the antibodies necessary to fight it off, should the real virus ever come around. In other words, it is almost like the body is given a training simulation against weakened versions of the enemy so that if the true enemy were to attack, they already understand their fighting patterns. However, the process of developing a vaccine is extensive and will require a lot of time – time that was wasted by world governments denying what was happening around them.

Instead of spending time stockpiling supplies and getting a headstart on virus creation, the US administration repeated China’s folly of ignoring warnings of SARS-CoV-2, and are not structured like the authoritarian government of China such that the virus can be cracked down on easily. Yes, China’s response to the coronavirus was inept, dishonest, and inconsiderate of the rest of the world, but the US government’s response was just as inept and dishonest.

This calls for a change.

For us to confront a global pandemic to this extent in the future, wide-scale changes must be made. Already, the pandemic is exposing many of America’s flaws and allowing workers to push for healthcare reform and better pay, though it is unlikely that any sweeping changes will actually be instituted. In the past, change has been incredibly hard to institute when caused by something with a non-human origin. Change has been instituted post-war, but nearly never post-pandemic.

The last pandemic on this scale was the Spanish Flu of 1918, and patterns can be found between that virus and this coronavirus. The most obvious is that both viruses were stereotyped by country: this coronavirus as Chinese and that influenza virus as Spanish, even though the Spanish Flu originated in the US. Even further, officials from Business Insider found that just like government officials did during this pandemic, US government officials downplayed the threat and thus contributed to its spread. Any large gatherings during the Spanish Flu directly correlated with a rise in deaths, similar to today.

If we have had a century to learn from our mistakes and learned nothing, then what hope is there for the future? Advances have been made in science, technology, and more, yet we continue to learn nothing from history, thus dooming us to repeat our mistakes for eternity.

Reporters from the Los Angeles Times have stated that in regards to change, crisis fuels the fires of change for the better. They highlighted positive changes in policies due to crises such as the Great Depression and the Civil War, but don’t mention the Spanish Flue or any other pandemic, highlighting that when it comes to crises from nature such as sicknesses, we are unable to react properly. 

These are uncertain times, and now that countries are unable to hide the truth of the pandemic from the citizens, they are doing what they can to clamp down on the virus. Let us take the chance to learn from our mistakes next time around. Let’s not shift blame to China or whatever country future viruses come from for whatever happens in our country. Let’s not ignore our own mistakes in handling the situation in a petty blame game. Let us instead learn from our own past mistakes and not clamp down on word of the virus, but take precautionary, preliminary action in order to save lives and keep the populace safe. If we learn from our mistakes, we can only do better, not worse. China messed up. So did we. Who knows? The next pandemic could be dealt with easily and quickly if we work together and are not dishonest for economic and political means.